Cassette

The late 1970s were a hectic period for mass market hi-fi; things were moving at such a breakneck pace that many Japanese manufacturers battled to keep up. As a result of this state of affairs, a lot of eccentric models like this were almost obsolete before they were launched – or, at the very least, […]

When you hear “British hi-fi,” you immediately think of Linn, Naim, Rega, Cyrus, and Creek, firms that rose to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Quad, SME, KEF, Leak, and Wharfedale, all of which gained popularity in the 1960s, will also be significant for elder audiophiles. But what of Britain’s lost hi-fi brands, the ones

Let us not forget that the Compact Cassette was a convenience media. But it was a medium on a mission: to dethrone open reel as the most popular recording format on the planet, and to do so, it needed to sound fantastic. As a result, we saw some extremely genuine initiatives from companies like Sony

In comparison to any modern music portable, Sony’s WM-D6C Walkman Professional cassette recorder is a massive, brick-like device. It’s ridiculously large by today’s standards, measuring 180x90x40mm and seeming like an eighties phone compared to the latest iDevice. When you look closer, however, you’ll notice the best-sounding portable ever created… Let’s not forget that Sony, not

Although no cassette deck has ever been compared to an oil painting, early specimens of the genre were particularly unappealing. Top-loaders from the 1970s were fiddly and unwieldy to operate, with controls strewn about indiscriminately, whilst front-loaders appeared bold and threatening. Forget about the physics of the machines. They were crude and clumsy, confirming cassette’s

Compact Cassette was still considered a novelty media in 1973, having been invented by Philips a decade before for dictation purposes alone. It was absurd to think it could deliver true hi-fi performance. Serious tape users possessed Revoxes, particularly the A77, or one of a growing number of high-end Japanese decks from Sony, Akai, or